I never really know how to feel when a production of one of my plays comes to an end. I don’t particularly find it very relaxing to sit through a performance – if I can’t find someone’s hand to squeeze, I tend to sit in the back and hope my view will be blocked by other peoples’ heads. And I guess ‘April‘ isn’t a particularly relaxing play for anyone to sit through as it hurtles towards its fairly bleak ending, so I’ll assume I’m not the only one who breathed a sigh of relief after last night’s performance at the Bike Shed Theatre.

I’m not relieved that it’s over, because I’m really going to miss working with New Model Theatre - with Tom, Eloise, Alice and Nick. The real relief for me is in watching my writing stand on its own two feet without falling over. That’s a nice feeling.

There have been a few tricky moments in realising this play, as there are with any production, so another source of relief to me is that we absolutely had the right team – the right cast, the right crew, and the right director. And we took the right opportunity to get it seen at the Bike Shed. I sincerely hope that From Devon With Love becomes a regular festival there.

It’s weird, because in so many ways, that’s sort of it. It’s done. We did it. But that’s not it, because I’m really very proud of this brutal little play, and I’m hoping it’ll go further. Maybe I’ll have something more to say on that front soon.

If you did see it last night – or last December when it was on at the Coffee Cellar – we’d love to hear from you about it. Feedback is so crucial to new theatre – we need the criticism so we can learn how to get better, and the praise so we can show how well we’ve already done! So please take a second to leave a comment on the New Model Theatre Facebook page - or leave a comment on this post. And thank you from all of us for being such a lovely audience.

SSB has always been controversial, which is probably why it’s always been so popular. To be honest, after feeling pretty disgusted by some of the decisions the organisers have made over the past two years, my knee-jerk reaction to hearing yet another tale of SSB misconduct is that the whole event should be thrown out. It seems so completely corrupted now that the ‘safe’ bit of the ball is like an afterthought, a joke, a vague memory of why SSB was founded and what the charities it sponsors are striving to achieve around the world.

I’m a confessed outsider when it comes to SSB. It has never felt like ‘my kind of thing’ because I’m not overly fussed about the idea of stripping off for a party. I would be fine with doing it in principle – me and my body are on pretty good terms. But I was at a friend’s birthday last week, fully dressed, in a pub. And I left that pub because a man was staring at me. An old man, by himself, staring at me, consistently. He didn’t react at all whenever I caught his eye (and I did a lot because you feel it all over when someone’s staring at you) and he didn’t stop. Another friend had to walk me out of the pub to make sure he wasn’t going to follow me home, because that’s how intimidating he was. I’m sure other women have had similar experiences. So when I say SSB isn’t my kind of thing, it’s not because I have a problem with the dress code, it’s because I already have enough incidents racked up of being harrassed and scared and upset without having been in my underwear and pressed up against a thousand other drunk people. I would rather not put myself and my body in that situation.

I think that’s what SSB is trying to be about, underneath it all – us, and our bodies, and our myriad sexualities. That’s what sex positivity is about. It’s about being comfortable and accepting. It’s about being honest about sex without glamorizing it, and recognising its place in humanity without shame for those who like a lot of it, or those who don’t have it at all. It’s about knowing yourself, your body, and what you want, and being able to tell your partners that, whilst also being damn sure that they are in the same place. It’s about consent, enthusiastic consent. And it’s also about acknowledging that other peoples’ sexualities are different to yours and that is absolutely okay.

SSB falls down on this when it sexualises other peoples’ cultures. Or when it thinks consent is something to joke about. It falls down when it fails to put enough security staff in a bar to separate a couple before they got caught on CCTV. Or when it doesn’t make it clear that despite the condoms being handed out at the door, there are, in fact, laws about where you can and cannot have safe sex. Or when a proportion of the people attending get so drunk beforehand that they aren’t even allowed into the venue. And most importantly, it falls down when all of this becomes what the event is perceived to be about by the wider community, when in reality the purported campaigns of SSB are completely different (apparently ‘sexual health and safer sex’, ‘no means no’ and ‘positive body image’, and the fact that I had to Google to find that out indicates they’re failing to reach everyone with those messages).

Obviously, the vast majority of students who attend SSB have an amazing night, and it’s a night that isn’t necessarily sexually charged every single second. When it comes down to it, it’s a ball, so it’s about getting drunk and dancing – and the dress code is just an added element of fun. It doesn’t inherently make it an immoral place where ‘bad things’ are more likely to happen, because an outfit has fuck all to do with sexual assault (alcohol has something to do with sexual assault, but in this respect SSB is no more dangerous than a Cheesy Tuesday at Arena). So the thing is, it wouldn’t actually take that much to bring out the sex positive core of SSB. It would take organisers who are much more savvy on social justice issues and much more aware of the environment they’re creating. That’s about it. There men everywhere – like my charming gentleman in the pub, who I personally hope treads on a Lego – whose ingrained misogynistic values lead them to make women feel uncomfortable, and SSB is not special – yet. It could be. If the organisers were explicit enough about it and made sure there was some way of enforcing it, it could be declared a revolutionary sex positive safe zone where it is every person’s responsibility to respect everyone else. It could foster a really inspiring attitude rather than making us all look like idiots.

We just need to be open to talking about this, and understanding why SSB keeps tripping up. We can’t just brush everything negative aside because ‘it’s for charity’ or ‘it’s only a bit of fun’, because that’s ignoring problems rather than solving them. I’d love to see RAG declare next year that SSB is going to be a fully sex positive environment (even if actual ‘activity’ might still be off the table) – and I’d love it even more if they followed through.

New Model Theatre, 2012

I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that ‘April‘ will be performed at the Bike Shed Theatre, Exeter, in January 2013. It’s going to be a part of their From Devon With Love mini-festival, which includes a brilliant, eclectic mix of various different performances from local practitioners – and I’m very proud that ‘April’ is going to be a part of that.

The two performances at the Coffee Cellar went brilliantly and were very well received. Thanks to everyone who came. If you’ve got any comments about the show, it’d be great to hear them over on the New Model Theatre page. And to anyone who didn’t or couldn’t come this weekend, please please please book a ticket for January – here!

Roll on 2013!

Second, hold aloft your trusty bulldog clip. A screwdriver will obviously work just as well (if not better), but you’ll definitely lose that desperate-student, will-use-anything-to-create-theatre vibe.

Third, lever an edge of the bulldog clip under the key of your choice. Time to say goodbye, Del. key.

Fourth, apply enough upward force to the end of the bulldog clip to ensure that the Del. key pops out of the keyboard, hits your sloping top floor ceiling and bounces from the top of your head on the way back down.

Finally, capture the escaped Del. key and put it safely in a plastic bag.

Repeat!

To find out what on earth we’re doing with all these massacred keys, make sure you come and see April! Friday 7th December, The Coffee Cellar, Exeter.

Rehearsals are well underway and Alice (April), Nick (Will), and Tom are ploughing through the blocking – I think we might be able to give it a very early stagger through at the end of the week… Something I’ve heard from both actors is that one of the strangest things about this duologue is not being able to make eye contact – most of the action happens online, so the characters can’t see each other and the actors pretty much stick to their separate spaces onstage. After a run of the scenes they’d already blocked on Sunday, they felt like they hadn’t seen each other for half an hour! It’s going to make it even more interesting when the webcam scenes happen and they are allowed to ‘see’ each other – and hopefully it’ll be as novel an experience for the audience as it is for the actors.

If anyone is in Exeter on the 7th December and you’d like to see some new writing, you can contact tom@tomnicholas.com to bagsie a ticket. Hurry though, since we really don’t have very many!

And here’s a little peek at what it’s looking like at this early stage. It mostly looks like lots of serious faces and sitting in weird positions. THEATRE.

(Oh, and we’re keeping the second performance quiet at the moment, cause it’s just too exciting to share right now!)

Unfortunately, I also took a bit of a break from writing, which I didn’t particularly want to do. I guess I’ve had a touch of writer’s block and a lot of ‘I’ll just spend today watching Buffy DVDs and do this tomorrow’. But I do have a few updates today.

Firstly, I went looking for a few prompts to wake up my writing brain, and the result is a new short play which I might enter into the Belper New Play Competition (since I’m a Derbyshire lass when I’m not busy gallivanting off to Exeter). It’s called In Love, which is a title I’m really not sure about, but I’m fairly pleased with the rest of it so far considering I don’t really do rom-coms… Feel free to take a look – I’ve put up a bit more than I usually would in the excerpt since it’s got a non-linear structure, so I thought anyone reading might need a little bit more to get the idea of it. If anyone’s got any thoughts or really wants to see the full script, let me know.

Secondly, after ignoring it for a very long time, I’ve redrafted Cracked and updated the excerpt over there too. Again, concrit is always welcome.

And finally, I’ve also redrafted April. Or, more accurately, I seem to have spent my whole summer redrafting April. I got some really helpful notes from someone in the Exeter Drama department (Martin Harvey of Forestage Theatre) and I’m confident that it’s now pretty much performance ready. Which is handy since the Exeter Theatre Collective are going to give it a first production as part of their Autumn season – more info on that soon!

So all in all it’s been a productive summer. I’m off to the paralympics tomorrow and back to Exeter to start the MA not long after that, so I have a feeling everything’s about to get very busy. Hopefully I won’t leave it another month and a half before updating again!

When I sent RL to The Bike Shed Theatre’s literary manager (the lovely Katie Villa), her advice to me was to consider adapting it for radio instead of the stage. I understood where she was coming from because it’s such a dialogue-based play, and it’s not immediately apparent how it can be staged. Maybe that’s still an option I’ll take one day, but having succeeded in putting RL on as a stage play, I think I prefer it as a visual piece - it’s much easier to get an idea of how online communities work if you can see a projected example. Plus, it meant we got to stage it like this, which was very exciting.

Pretty, no?

Dad also suggested to me after my career panic that it might be easier to get something put on by the local radio station than the local theatre, especially if it was locally oriented (although I’m not sure what I’d write about in Derby – the shiny new bus station?). It seems like radio is a much less saturated market in terms of playwrights, so if I’m looking to get my name out there, it might be an easier path to take.

I like the idea. It’s a good idea, in theory. I’ve never written for the radio before, so that’s daunting, but I’ve got the first outline of an idea (which, sadly, is not about Derby’s shiny new bus station). I’ve written a very short opening scene and I have most of the characters in place. And even though it’s a bit scary to try something new, you never lose anything by trying. Plus, I’m finding it incredibly liberating to turn off the part of me that is used to writing for tiny/non-existent budgets – who cares how much that would cost to construct on a stage? This is for radio! I can have all the zeppelins I want!*

*Play does not actually contain zeppelins. Yet.

1) I’ve just finished the first draft of a new short play, Cracked, which has been written for a temporary theatre company hoping to make some noise later this year. Hopefully I’ll be able to fill you all in on that properly when things get going, but for now you can have a look at an excerpt of the play over here. This is particularly exciting since I set myself the goal of writing three original plays in 2012, and this means I’ve already achieved it! The other two plays are, of course, April, and another short play called Unplanned which was written for a competition (it didn’t win). I’m not sure whether Unplanned will ever be seeing the light of day – I wasn’t particularly happy with it. But a target fulfilled nonetheless, and hopefully whatever I write next will be better.

2) I’m really chuffed to announce that I’m now an official member of the Exeter Theatre Collective. This is a seriously talented group of people – one of the core members is my very own Directo, Abbi Davey. I was disappointed to have to pull out of the core earlier this year, so I’m even more excited to be joining their non-core membership – as far as I can see, that means getting every fantastic opportunity associated with being able to work with a great new company without having to cope with too much administrative/organisational stress. So yay! I encourage you to have a good look through their website and keep abreast of any upcoming productions, and if you’re an Exeter-based practitioner, you’d be silly not to join.

Mum and I have a good rant every now and then about the annual bashing that students get when, every single year, they get better results than the previous year and the response is ‘GCSEs/A Levels are getting easier’. I didn’t really notice this trend until I got my GCSE results – probably because I didn’t pay too much attention to the news before the age of 16, but mostly because that was the year I had a personal investment in what everyone else was saying about my newly gained, hard-earned and proudly celebrated qualifications. And, as per, there was the usual ignorant chatter about how the increase in A*-C grades earned could only mean that GCSEs were an absolute doddle.

Since my GCSEs, I’ve experienced an array of assessments as I moved through AS Levels, A Levels, and my BA (the results of which I just found out, and I’m proud to say I got a first). And I can honestly say that, looking back on every stage of my academic career, my GCSEs were the hardest exams I’ve ever done. I’d say this was down to a couple of things – they were the first real exams I’d taken for a while (my school didn’t do Year 9 SATs), and all the practise exam papers in the world can’t prepare you for the reality of knowing that your performance over the next couple of hours decides part of your future. In addition to that, I took 11 subjects at GCSE. Despite the fact that two of those subjects were ‘short’ courses, therefore only counting for half a GCSE each, that’s still 11 different disciplines which I was expected to get a good grasp on in two years, some of which were only allotted two periods of the timetable per week.

I have never had to hold that breadth of information in my head since. I doubt very many people have. Some students take 12, 13, 14 subjects. And I think it’s absolutely the right and the only way to help students decide which subjects, of the many that their schools have to offer, they would like to pursue further at AS Level and beyond. But I will fight fiercely with anyone who tries to tell me that it is not difficult, particularly if they have not had something very similar demanded of them in the past five years.

If GCSE results are on the rise, my first instinct would be to suggest that this is because the students taking GCSEs this year have been moving through a system of education which has been preparing them to take those exams. GCSEs have been around for 24 years. That means teachers, both primary and secondary, have been aiming for that recommended five GCSEs at A*-C for a long time. They know what and how they must teach in order to get the majority of students achieving that, and naturally they’re getting better at it every year. GCSEs are the only examinations which students have to take, even if they drop out of school immediately afterwards. Those exams are the goal. They are the benchmark. So why on earth is our first instinct to claim that those exams are worthless, when instead it might mean that our teachers are doing a good job? Only in teaching, it seems, is ‘working the system’ to meet government quotas something which ought to be stopped, not praised.

And if meeting quotas shouldn’t be the goal of GCSEs, then what precisely is the goal of these new, ‘tougher’ O Levels and their ‘less academic’ counterpart, the CSEs? To separate ‘good’ and ‘bad’ students at the age of 14 and limit those people to following certain career paths and lifestyles? To discourage even the best of students when they fail to get the As and A*s they were otherwise heading for? To prove that the English are tough and elitist so we can have ridiculous, Four Yorkshiremen-style bragging rights? ‘In my day, the only way to get an A* was to carve your answer into the buttocks of a live tiger…and we loved it!’

If there’s one method of assessment I think that every Level could benefit from, it’s continuous assessment. This has been a small part of most of the modules I’ve taken as a BA Drama student – never any more than 25% worth of my overall mark for that module, but significant nonetheless to my attitude in classes. Basically, a continuous assessment mark is like an effort grade. It’s a representation of what kind of student you have been in a class – whether you’ve been attentive, whether you’ve been punctual, how much you have contributed towards class discussions and the quality of those contributions, and what kind of person you are shaping up to be. Because that’s something we really ought to be developing and assessing – not who can regurgitate the most information under pressurised conditions, only to forget it two weeks later – and I’d like to point out that I have never found exam technique to be the slightest bit useful to me in the ‘real world’, except in learning lines and performing them. Acting isn’t learning, Michael Gove.

We need to give some power to the teachers, who spend so many meaningful contact hours with their students, to decide what they achieve. And we should do this not by giving them a different set of hoops for them to teach their students to jump through come exam day, but by introducing some method whereby the teachers can reward those students who made the effort, in every class, to learn, not just remember, and to contribute, not just achieve A*-C. Because ultimately, the people who put in the work continuously are learning much more valuable skills than those who cram an hour before an exam so they can get a good grade.

I asked my mum to read my latest play, April, knowing full well that there’s a line in it that’s sexually explicit and deliberately disgusting. Weirdly enough, Mum didn’t particularly enjoy that line. Which is great, since that’s the effect it’s supposed to have on the audience. That’s certainly the effect that the character, April, is hoping it’ll have on Will. Sometimes it’s important to create that recoil reaction, to create tension between the characters, and between the stage and the audience.

I can’t speak for others so I don’t know whether this is true for other playwrights, but I’d say that the most successful moments of naturalism in my scripts are actually moments of mimicry. I’m very aware that one of the things I need to do as a new writer is develop an individual ‘voice’ for my plays, and to be honest, the voice that feels most comfortable to me is my own. So when I’m trying for naturalism, I’ll often try to frame a line with my own speech patterns, or the patterns of my friends and family.

At the moment, I’m considering very carefully the words that I give to my characters for those explicit, shout-y, argument-starting lines. It seems very clear to me that there are some words which are insulting, and there are some words which are hate speech. There are some words which are designed to briefly hurt/anger/frustrate/embarrass an individual, and there are some words which are loaded, which carry with them a history of oppression and discrimination.

I firmly believe that there are no words that are off-limits in the theatre. But I also believe that if you are about to have one of your characters use a slur, there’s a responsibility alongside that to make that moment look, feel and sound wrong. A TV example that springs to mind is Life on Mars. It’s set in 1973, so we often hear DCI Gene Hunt casually using words that are now falling out of use because of their hateful, discriminatory connotations – like ‘f*ggot’, for example. But because we have a modern day police officer, Sam Tyler, also present in the series, the use of these words, even in a historical and social context where it would be ‘accurate’ or ‘right’ to hear them used, is constantly challenged and highlighted as unacceptable.

So even though there are some words that I am not currently comfortable hearing my characters say onstage, I’m not saying that they should never be said onstage. There is nothing wrong with prizing accuracy onstage over idealism. It’s just that, on a personal level, I would rather try to write idealistically than accurately. I would rather edit out the bigotry of everyday speech and attempt to create characters who have other ways of expressing themselves. The stage doesn’t have to be a mirror. It doesn’t have to simply reflect and perpetuate. It can look forward instead, and model new behaviours. It can explore glorious, creative expletives, words and phrases which express the full range of anger, frustration and disgust, without relying on words that are tired, boring, and bigoted.

This means that, at the moment, there are words that are off-limits to my characters. I’m trying to weed out ‘-isms’ from my own speech, so I feel uncomfortable using them in my plays when I can usually think of an appropriate synonym. Which is probably why my characters say ‘fuck’ so much.

What about the rest of you? What do you try to create in your characters’ language – accuracy or idealism?